| General > General Technical Chat |
| Cheap eBay caps went bad (on the shelf!) |
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| mc349iii:
A while back I was fixing my electronic clock radio and it needed a capacitor replacing. I didn’t have any the right voltage / capacity but I managed to salvage one from an old board. The radio has stayed working since. So at the time I decided I should buy a few capacitors to have on hand for the future. So I bought a pack of 10 16V 1000uF low ESR caps from eBay for 99p (including postage!). They arrived and I put them in a tub on my storage shelves. This was Oct 2020. I came to actually use one yesterday and found that they had actually gone bad just sitting on the shelf. Two of them have popped their cans off and the rest are bulging and show signs of leakage. I’m surprised that they went bad just sitting on the shelf. They weren’t in direct sunlight and would have been kept at room temperature nothing above 30degC or below 10degC. Certainly well below their rating of 105 degC! Has anyone else had this happen? I’ve looked up a similar item on Digikey and a Rubicon or Nichicon equivalent is about 40p each plus VAT and shipping. So maybe they were suspiciously cheap! But hey they have gold writing on, so they can’t be all bad? Anyway maybe I’ll avoid suspiciously cheap JCCON caps on eBay in future. |
| bdunham7:
But are/were they truly "LOWESR"? :-DD |
| mc349iii:
I just put the least bulging example into my cheapo component tester. That's not too bad? Lost 400uF somewhere ;D |
| bdunham7:
Apparently "LOWESR" is actually a bad phonetic spelling of "lousy". |
| BrokenYugo:
They say "VENT" right on them, performed as advertised. Seriously though, some parts simply don't come cheap and electrolytic caps fall under that umbrella. You'll see it advised that beyond a small test/breadboard assortment you shouldn't bother stocking any, it doesn't make sense between the very wide variety and high cost, this is good advice. Buy as needed from trusted component suppliers, LCSC at the cheapest, personally I replace bad electrolytic caps with either long life Japanese brand parts from Mouser/Digikey or find something close enough that tests ok on a scrap board. Careful salvage is better odds than eBay caps, for that matter some of the larger cheap ebay caps are resleeved scrap parts pulled from ewaste. |
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